John Gregory arrived at Villa Park in the company of Brian Little in the end of 1994. Ron Atkinson had just been given the sack, and Gregory was part of Little's team at Leicester. He was Little's coach for two years, but in October 96, he had enough of being just a coach, and he accepted the offer from Wycombe to become their manager. He stayed there for a little more than a year, during which did a great job saving Wycombe from relegation into division three.

In February 98, Brian Little resigned much to the shock of all Aston Villa fans. Hours later, John Gregory had become the new manager, not needing much time to consider the offer when asked by Villa secretary Steven Stride.

John Gregory began his football career at Northampton in 1970. In 1972, he turned professional, playing for the first team. In 1977, he became a Villa player on a £40,000 transfer. He earned a total of 65 apperances for the claret and blue, playing in a lot of different positions under the management of the legendary Ron Saunders. £250,000 was the price for his transfer to Brighton in 1979, as was £300,000 when he went on to Queens Park Rangers in 1981. He started to shine in the midfield, to such an extend that he earned six England caps. Derby bought him for £100,000 in 1985, and he spent the rest of his playing career there.

Gregory retired in 1988, and shortly afterwards, he was made Assistant Manager at Portsmouth, later becoming Manager until 1990. He was invited by his former teammate Brian Little to become a coach at Leicester, which he accepted in 1991. He stayed with Brian Little at Leicester and then Aston Villa before moving to Wycombe in 1996.

He got off to the best of starts with a 2-1 home win over Liverpool, a team that had beaten Villa 5 times in the last 6 fixtures. Switching to a 3-4-3 formation proved very innovative and efficient, and he then enjoyed a roller-coaster of a season the following year. Aston Villa started out with a record-breaking harvest: a 12-game unbeaten run. All the way to Christmas, Aston Villa topped the Premier League table, and only lack of fortune saw Villa finish 6th in the league. An early european exit was more down to bad luck than bad play from Aston Villa.

The following season (1999/2000) saw Villa start out like last season, and top the Premier League table once more for the first two weeks of the competition. Villa eventually finished 6th in the league once more, and FA Cup runners up after a final against Chelsea that saw Villa dominate the firts half, and Chelsea the second. Chelsea produced one tru goalscoring chance, and took it, thus ending up 1-0 winners.

One thing was for certain: John Gregory did not put up with any lip from his players, and especially Stan Collymore had a hard time with him. Collymore wound up exiting the club for no transfer fee at all (a £7 million loss). Gregory had little time for prima donnas, and the following summer, it was Benito Carbone's turn to leave the club after Gregory refused to meet his salary demands.

Season by season went by, and considering the budget that Gregory had to spend on squad reinforcements, it was a true wonder that Aston Villa finished 6th, 6th and 8th the three times Gregory was in charge. Gregory continued to be rock solid in his beliefs, and if something bothered him, he didn't bottle it up. He faced problems like a raging bull, and that got him an anormous respect in the dressing room.

Most fans agreed on one thing, though. John Gregory's (at times) blatantly disrespectul comments on some of his players in public was a big mistake. Both Collymore and lately, David Ginola, were subject to such comments, and they never got settled with the team again after that. Most legendary are Gregory's comments on Ginola's (alleged) fitness problems: "All the players are as fit as buthcer's dogs. As for David Ginola, it depends on which butcher you shop at". Hardly wise of Gregory to be so unsupportive of his players in public.

It was a gigantic shock for all Villans when Gregory resigned on January 24th 2002. For the Villa Park faithful, it came out of the blue, and few people believed the newsflash when they first saw it. John Gregory's own reason was that he needed to take a break from the pressure of football. This came only days after he had reassured the media that stress was for the managers in the lower leagues with no assurance of what to do, if they were fired.

Unfortunately, contradictions were commonplace in the week that followed, and Gregory gave several different explanations for why he left Aston Villa. He then signed for Derby in a big hurry, indicating that it may be true that he left the club with the permission of Doug Ellis and the rest of the board, and had the appointment at Derby in hand before he left.

Dear John, the circumstances surrounding your exit were a bit shady, I hate to say, but both as a player and a manager, you did great things for our club.